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Tuesday, June 20, 2017

The Gulf Crisis: Southeast Asia has seen it all before

Two competing visions of ensuring regime survival are
battling it out in the Gulf.

To Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the 2011 Arab popular
revolts that toppled autocratic leaders in four countries and sparked the rise
of Islamist forces posed a mortal threat. In response, the two countries
launched a counterrevolution that six years later continues to leave a trail of
brutal repression at home and spilt blood elsewhere in the Middle East and
North Africa.

Virtually alone in adopting a different tack based on former
emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s principle of “riding the tide of
history,” Qatar, a monarchical autocracy like its detractors, Saudi Arabia and
the UAE, embraced the revolts and wholeheartedly supported the Islamists. The
result is an epic battle for the future of the region that in the short-term
has escalated the violence, deepened the region’s fissures, and put the tiny Gulf
state at odds with its larger brethren.

Ironically, an analysis of political transition in Southeast
Asia during the last three decades would likely prove instructive for leaders
in the Gulf. At the core of people power and change were militaries or factions
of militaries in the Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar that saw political
change as their best guarantee of holding on to significant powers and
protecting their vested interests.

In the Philippines and Indonesia, factions of the military
partnered with civil society to show the door to the country’s autocrat. In
Myanmar, internationally isolated, the military as such opted to ensure its
survival as a powerful player by initiating the process of change.

Sheikh Hamad, and his son and successor, Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad Al Thani, have adopted the principle set forward by Southeast Asian
militaries and their civil society partners with one self-defeating difference:
a belief that by supporting political change everywhere else they can retain
their absolute grip on power at home.

In fact, if there is one fundamental message in the
two-week-old Saudi-UAE-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar, it is the
recognition of the two countries’ ruling elites that they either thwart change
at whatever cost or go with the flow. There are no half-measures.

There is however another lesson of history to be learnt from
the Southeast Asian experience: change is inevitable. Equally inevitable, is
the fact that unavoidable economic change and upgrading rather than reform of
autocracy like Saudi Arabia is attempting with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman in the driver’s seat has a limited shelf life without political change.

Gulf autocrats marvel at China’s ability to achieve phenomenal
economic growth while tightening the political reigns. It’s a model that is
proving increasingly difficult to sustain as China witnesses an economic
downturn, a failure to economically squash popular aspirations, and question
marks about massive infrastructure investment across Eurasia that has yet to
deliver sustainable results and has sparked debt traps and protest across the
region.

The Southeast Asian lesson is that political change does not
by definition dis-empower political elites. In fact, those elites have retained significant
power in the Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar despite radical reform of
political systems. That is true even with the rise for the first time of
leaders in Indonesia and the Philippines who do not hail from the ruling class
or with the ascendancy to power in Myanmar of Aung San Suu Kyi, a long-persecuted
daughter of the ruling elite, who has refrained from challenging the elite
since winning an election.

The bottom line is that ruling elites are more likely to
ensure a continued grip on power by going with the flow and embracing political
change than by adopting the Saudi-UAE approach of imposing one’s will by hook
or by crook or the Qatari model of playing ostrich with its head in the sand.

The Qatari model risks the ruling Al Thani family being
taken by surprise when an inevitably reinvigorated wave of change comes
knocking on Doha’s door. More ominous are the risks involved in the Saudi-UAE
approach.

That approach has already put the two states in a bind as
they struggle in the third week of their boycott of Qatar to formulate demands
that stand a chance of garnering international support. Even more dangerous is
the risk that the hard line adopted by Saudi Arabia and the UAE will fuel
extremism and political violence in an environment starved of any opportunity
to voice dissent.

The lessons of Southeast Asia are relevant for many more than
only the sheikhdoms that are battling it out in the Gulf. International support
for political transition in Southeast Asia produced a relatively stable region
of 600 million people despite its jihadist elements in the southern Philippines
and Indonesia, jihadist appeal to some elsewhere in the region, religious and
ethnic tensions in southern Thailand and Myanmar, and deep-seated differences
over how to respond to Chinese territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

That support also ensured that the process of change in
Southeast Asia proved to be relatively smooth and ultimately sustainable unlike
the Middle East where it is tearing countries apart, dislocating millions, and causing
wounds that will take generations to heal.

To be sure, Southeast Asia benefitted from the fact that no
country in the region has neither the ambition nor the ruthlessness of either
Saudi Arabia or the UAE.

Southeast Asia also had the benefit of an international community
that saw virtue in change rather than in attempting to maintain
stability by supporting autocratic regimes whose policies are increasingly
difficult to justify and potentially constitute a driver of radicalization
irrespective of whether they support extremist groups.

Former US President George W. Bush adopted that lesson in
the wake of 9/11 only to squander his opportunity with ill-fated military
interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, a flawed war on terrorism, and a poorly
executed democracy initiative. The lesson has since been lost with the rise of
populism and narrow-minded nationalism and isolationism.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile